#33 The House of Cards

...and that is why I don't like arctic roll. Unlike our next band that You Have Not Heard. They love it.

It's 1985 and Ian Michaelson has it all. Model wife. Big House. Fast car.

It's 1996. Ian Michaelson has nothing. No house. Big, fast wife. Model car. His life had come tumbling down like, well, like a tonne of fat-wife-sized dominoes.

What happened in the eleven year intervening period? How did one man go from riches to rags from beef to mutton and from After Eight Mint to just plain Ferrero Rocher? The answer to this and various other mind shatteringly complex questions, lead us to The House of Cards.

Ian Michaelson loved his cards and was a proud member of the Magic Circle (membership number 6384). Michaelson was also a gambler. Not like the amiable gambler in the hit song of the same name by Kenny Rogers. Oh no. Michaelson had no idea when to hold them, let alone when to fold them.

Michaelson was a serious gambler. No nudie decks for him. In fact, he had a ten year stretch of good luck that saw him win big money and celebrity Vegas friends such as NASCAR driver Butch Butchelson, six Tom Jones-alikes and Siegfried, but not Roy (Roy thought he was a bit of a "kuchen-schnitzel"). Everything was going his way until one fateful night in 1995.

The venue - Scarborough Bingodrome ("For all your gamble-tainment needs. We practically roulette you win! There's Casi-No way you can lose, even if your Craps!"). The game was Pontoon or 'Twenty-One'. And you see, for most people the clue to success in this game is in the title - "Twenty-One". Michaelson did not see this and let his vice take over. On the fifth hand of the fifth game Michaelson had a jack and a nine - nineteen for all intents and purpose was a fabulous hand that was certain to beat the paltry hand of the house. He had everything riding on that one hand. His car, his house, the money for his wife's monthly gastric bypass procedure.

Alas, he twisted when he should've stuck. "Hit me!" he declared smugly. The crowd gasped. Four of spades - bust! But he just couldn't take that he had lost. Kenny Rogers was frowning at him whilst simultaneously turning in his grave. "Hit me" Michaelson cried for the tenth time, before being ejected with a score of eighty-six. In the history of mistakes this was something a bit special. It's certainly up there with the time that Napoleon decided to have a swim straight after eating his lunch. In fact this was possibly a worse mistake than when Nick Griffin was invited to appear on hit BBC genealogical TV show 'Who Do You Think You Are?'. It turns out he was wrong all along.

At this, the absolute nadir of his career, Michaelson decided that there was only one sensible course of action - he formed a band with two down-on-their-luck gambling buddies. Michaelson sung and played guitar whilst Ian "Snake Eyes" Jeffers tackled percussion and Babyface Bob the bass. They played comfortable middle-of-the-road country, comfortably and on one or two occasions in the middle of a country road. Imagine The Eagles crossed with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Boston. On acid. Yeah so all those bands just sound like The Eagles but just imagine it - that's what The House of Cards sounded like that is.

It was Michaelson's fine finger-picking style that was the envy of, well, the other band members. Seeing as Babyface only used his thumb to play bass and Snake Eyes could only play the drums, they were both pretty much in awe of his talents. The group lasted only one gig with of more than six people. Their last took place at the Lytham St Annes Hippodome (or 'Dome of Hippos' - the children's funworld, just off the M55). A rather over enthusiastic father had booked them to play at his daughter's sixth birthday partythinking they were a trio of clown-magicians. Despite the mix-up they set-up in the ball pond and played a set so alienatingly mind-blowing that three kids went on to form Razorlight, two ran out screaming 'stranger danger, stranger danger' and one burped up a jammie dodger in Snake Eyes' hair after singing the whole of Hotel California in Cantonese. Before their final number Michaelson bet the audience all their instruments that he could beat Hippodome mascot Hippo-po-Thomas in three rounds of no rules, bare-knuckle fighting. Michaelson was obviously not aware that the hippo is actually more fricking dangerous than you would think. He was floored with one punch and there, on the floor of a children's play centre and "Kingdom of Fun", ended his musical career.

So, what of The House of Cards today? Michaelson is now working on a gambling awareness cartoon called 'PokerMon'. It aims to introduce children to the highs and lows of gambling but takes a cautious and responsible approach. Yes gambling is fine, but doing it once also makes you want to do it lots. It educates kids, advising them what to do with their chips when they're winning with it's snappy catchphrase - 'Gotta Cash em all'. With the recent advances and reduced cost of laser surgery Snake Eyes has finally had the operation he always desired. Now he just gets called Ian. Babyface (now 63) still has the youthful glow of a man a sixtieth his age. Scientists are interested in carrying out "certain medical procedures" on him to ascertain whether he really holds the secret to eternal youth or whether he has just been taking tips from Andie McDowell. No recordings remain of The House of Cards but it's thought that Snake Eyes' Mum may have one or two cassettes knocking about in the loft.

Interestingly, in 2004 the band appeared as an (incorrect) answer to a question on series two, episode five of hit BBC tv show QI. The question was 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor?'.